BookLovers: Let Gerritsen keep you in suspense

Something that keeps you turning pages until you glance at the clock and see hours have passed.

Characters you're still thinking about just before you drift off to sleep at night.

Pages you keep turning because, towards the end, every other one has a twist or surprise that makes your jaw actually drop.

Suspense fans, this column's for you.

If you're looking for crime, medical drama, suspense and mystery, look no further than Tess Gerritsen: a Maine doctor-cum-writer whose fan base boomed when TNT launched a program based on her popular book series featuring Rizzoli and Isles.

Gerritsen's "Rizzoli & Isles" books are set in Boston. They're about Jane Rizzoli, a tough-as-nails Boston police detective, and Maura Isles, a medical examiner from a privileged background. The two women work together, not unlike Sherlock and Watson, to solve many a crime.

The TNT series "Rizzoli & Isles" stars Angie Harmon, Sasha Alexander and Lorraine Bracco ("Goodfellas," "The Sopranos.") The fourth season will begin in the summer.

"I got a call from a producer who told me 'I love your girls and think they belong on TV,'" Gerritsen told me.

"Since I'd had other books optioned or sold for film, and nothing ever happened with those, I was pessimistic about anything happening. But a year later "¦ TNT gave the go-ahead. Up until it actually got picked up as a series, I didn't believe it would happen," she said.

As for her own series, the 10th installment, "Last to Die," sees Maura and Jane once again working together to solve a disturbing crime:

For the second time in his short life, Teddy Clock has survived a massacre. Two years ago, he barely escaped when his entire family was slaughtered. Now, at 14, Teddy is the lone survivor of his foster family's mass murder. Working the case, Jane soon discovers two other orphaned teens with similar stories, and realizes that what seemed like a coincidence is instead just one horrifying part of an obsessed killer's twisted mission "¦

"My love for the mystery and suspense genre goes back to my childhood of watching horror films," Gerritsen told me. "My mom was a big fan of those movies and she took me to every scary movie that came to town. I thought that the height of entertainment was to scare the audience."

Gerritsen grew up in San Diego and moved to Maine 22 years ago after a vacation there convinced her that New England was "where I was always meant to be." (Stephen King, Gerritsen "¦ what's in the water up in Maine? )

Gerritsen practiced medicine for five years, but soon retired to follow her passion and become a writer.

"I've wanted to write since I was 7 years old, so when I left the hospital on maternity leave in 1986, that was my excuse to finally sit down and work on my first novel," she said.

"Jane Rizzoli was inspired by several female cops I'd met — tough, smart women who had to prove themselves every day. Maura is very much like me — logical, introverted, and educated in science."

Right now, Gerritsen is working on the 11th book in her Rizzoli & Isles series, a story, she told me, that is "inspired by something that happened to me on safari in Africa. It will involve quite a bit about leopard biology."

Now that sounds interesting.

Gerritsen said she started off as a young girl "loving the Nancy Drew series, which is what many female mystery authors will tell you."

Not just female mystery authors: Powerful females such as Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Barbara Walters have all cited Nancy Drew books as inspiring them as young girls.

Now, let me tell you: Nancy Drew absolutely fascinates me.

She is a cultural icon — you hear the name, you picture the girl detective. But moreover, the young adult mystery books are an actual phenomenon — culturally, socially and literarily.

The series started in 1930, at a time when girls generally weren't the heroes — they were the objects won by the heroes at the end. They were the Maid Marians, not the Robin Hoods.

The idea for the books was conceived by Edward Stratemeyer. They were ghostwritten by a number of authors, collectively published by Stratemeyer under the pen name "Carolyn Keene."

Still in publication today, the books have sold more than 80 million copies during the last 83 years, spawning dozens of film and TV series, and have adapted to the cultural climate as time has marched on.

There are scholars who are devoted to the study of the Nancy Drew phenomenon, comparing the various versions of the character as symbols of our changing ideas of femininity, female power, and the American social climate. For example, in the 1980s, "The Nancy Drew Files" series portrayed a grown-up, sexy, powerful business woman. Today, in the "Girl Detective" series, she's a teenager with a hybrid car and a cell phone.

The more you read about Nancy Drew, the more fascinating she becomes — how in the early movies she was portrayed as a ditzy blond, then a smarter, darker-haired woman, later a brunette college student studying journalism, then a smart and witty blonde teen again. I could go on forever about this, but I'll stop here.

I will suggest, though, that if you have a 9- to 15-year-old niece, daughter, or family friend, that you give her a copy of a modern Nancy Drew book. For girls that age, the books are truly addicting.

Then there are the Hardy Boys "¦ but I'll save that for another column.